Mount Cluster Storage

Modified

February 28, 2024

SSHFS 1 is a FUSE-based file-system 2 used to mount remote directories over an SSH connection.

sshfs allows users to transparently access files available on the storage systems connected to the Virgo cluster. It is in particular useful to work with development tools installed on your local computer while accessing files and data stored on Lustre shared storage.

Most Linux distributions provide a package called sshfs for installation. Apple users may want to work with the FUSE for MacOS Project 3, which provides an sshfs client as well. Similar for Windows users a client is provided by the WinFsp project 4.

Following example mounts the GSI user home-directory from a login node:

mnt=/tmp/u/$USER
mkdir -p $mnt
sshfs $USER@lxpool: $mnt

Mount Lustre from the files.hpc.gsi.de nodes using a proxy jump over a login node:

mnt=/tmp/lustre
mkdir $mnt
sshfs -o ProxyJump=lxlogin.gsi.de files.hpc.gsi.de:/lustre $mnt

# Remove a mount on your local node  with the `fusermount` command:
fusermount -u $mnt

It is recommended to read the very comprehensive documentation from the ArchLinux project 5 about SSHFS for further details.

Footnotes

  1. SSHFS Project (Linux), GitHub
    https://github.com/libfuse/sshfs↩︎

  2. Filesystems in the Linux kernel, The Linux Kernel
    https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/filesystems/fuse.html↩︎

  3. FUSE for MacOS, GitHub
    https://github.com/osxfuse/osxfuse↩︎

  4. SSHFS for Windows, GitHub
    https://winfsp.dev/
    https://github.com/winfsp/sshfs-win↩︎

  5. SSHFS, ArchLinux Wiki
    ArchLinux Project
    https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/SSHFS↩︎